It lets Democrats off the hook for their own failures—and betting the resistance on finding a smoking gun is a fool’s game.

April 6, 2017

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I’m in favor of anything that undermines, or brings about the downfall of, Donald Trump. He’s a monster. And to the degree that focusing on his campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia to game the 2016 election helps with this, then fine. The Senate should investigate and independent journalists should look for more damning information. But it’s high risk to bet the resistance on finding a smoking gun, proving that Donald Trump—not an associate, not some weird hanger-on, not even an in-law—knowingly worked with Putin to hack the DNC, or offered some back-channel dollars for a détente deal. Anything short of tying it to Trump means Trump survives. Tim Weiner, a former New York Times national security journalist and Pulitzer Prize–winning author, says the investigation of the Russian story could last years.1

As many others have pointed out, an obsessive focus on Putin absolves the Democratic Party from having to reckon with their own failings, as if it was Moscow that tricked Hillary Clinton to not campaign in Wisconsin, or to spend the whole month of August (after Bernie Sanders’s gracious call on his supporters to back her campaign) courting neocons.2

Meanwhile, MSNBC has turned itself into the equivalent of the Christic Institute, which in the 1980s lost a lawsuit surrounding an Iran/Contra bombing by chasing “unsubstantiated conspiracism.” Iran/Contra was a real conspiracy, much of which by nature was “unsubstantiated.” But as Alex Cockburn liked to remind, conspiracies are natural terrain for the right but a rough one for the left. At best, they exert a powerful pull toward depoliticization and cynicism. At worst, they lead to Alex Jones Infowars–style anti-government lunacy.

Many say that serious crimes have been committed and that the investigation should continue. I don’t disagree.

With Trump on the ropes—arguably because of the Russia entanglements but also arguably not, especially in the parts of the country the Democrats need to win back—now is the time to put forth an aggressive social-democratic platform, one that includes single-payer, student debt relief, a real industrial policy, and free education.3

Instead, we have Rachel Maddow giving 20 minutes of her show to a petition on the whitehouse.gov site calling on the United States to return Alaska to Russia. Less than 40,000 people signed that petition, but Maddow smells something rotten. “Our examination of those signing and posting on its petition revealed an odd pattern,” she begins the segment, going on to connect dizzying constellation of dots leading back to Putin: “It is fascinating, boy, they’ve come a long way from their give Alaska back to the Russia of petitions, right?” Right. Like Holmes’s Moriarty, Putin appears to be the “organizer of half that is evil and of nearly all that is undetected….He is a genius, a philosopher, and abstract thinker. He has a brain of the first order. He sits motionless, like a spider in the centre of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations.” And Maddow will pluck each one.4

3

4

5

There are many sane people who say that serious crimes have been committed and that the investigation should continue. I don’t disagree. But the dangers are many and the rabbit hole is deep, and it might not have a floor. “Do cats eat bats?” Alice asked herself as she fell down down down, or “Do bats eat cats?” As she couldn’t answer either question, it didn’t much matter which way she put it.5

“Why can’t we do both?” some ask of those who criticize the obsession with Russia. “Why can’t we investigate and renew the Democratic Party?” It’s a good question, and it should be put to the DNC. Why can’t they? To me, it looks like both is exactly what they are not doing. From the outside, the long-term DNC strategy seems to be this: Russia, Russia, Russia; 2018, damn we almost took the House were it not for gerrymandering; Russia, Russia, Russia; try to win the White House in 2020 with a candidate who can rebuild the Obama coalition. Oh so close.6

To understand how this could all go wrong for the Democrats, how they might blow it, it is good to take instruction from, as one always should, Iran/Contra.7

To understand how this could all go wrong for the Democrats, we should take instruction from Iran/Contra.

A little over thirty years ago, with Reagan in power, the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa reported on the White House’s secret, high-tech missile sale to Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran, which violated an arms embargo against that country and contradicted President Ronald Reagan’s personal pledge never to deal with governments that sponsored terrorism. Shortly thereafter, it was revealed that profits from the illegal arms sale went to support the Nicaraguan Contras, bypassing a congressional prohibition against supplying lethal aid to the anti-Sandinista rebels.8

The full scandal of what became Iran/Contra had its origins in a series of shadowy meetings, in the Middle East and Central America, before and after Reagan’s 1980 election, not unlike all the dalliances that are coming to light now involving the likes of Michael Flynn, Erik Prince, Jared Kushner, and Jeff Sessions. On one level, this is standard operating procedure: New administrations send out feelers, probe to see what is possible in advancing their foreign-policy agenda, and send out formal and informal envoys. These conversations have often been illegal, such as when Richard Nixon’s campaign, in 1968, urged South Vietnam to reject a ceasefire that might have helped his Democratic opponent, or when Reagan’s campaign director, William Casey, worked with Tehran to delay the release of US hostages. As early as 1979, two Reaganite retired generals, including John Singlaub, who had ties to the fascist World Anti-Communist League, which was basically an international consortium of death squads, traveled to Central America and told Guatemalan officials that “Mr. Reagan recognizes that a good deal of dirty work has to be done.” Genocide and mass murder followed. There were many such meetings, in Tehran, Tegucigalpa, Beirut, all laying the groundwork for what became Iran/Contra.9

When Iran/Contra broke, Democrats, after years of banging their heads on Reagan’s popularity and failing to derail his legislative agenda, couldn’t believe their luck. Here’s a bit from something I wrote for TomDispatch a decade ago on the twentieth anniversary:10

investigations soon uncovered a scandal of epic proportions, arguably the most consequential in American history, one that seemed sure to disgrace every single constituency that had fueled the upstart conservative movement. The Reagan Revolution, it appeared, had finally been thrown into reverse. The New York Times reported that the National Security Council was running an extensive “foreign policy initiative largely in private hands,” made up of rogue intelligence agents, mercenaries, neoconservative intellectuals, Arab sheiks, drug runners, anticommunist businessmen, even the Moonies. Profits from the missile sale to Iran, brokered by a National Security Council staffer named Oliver North, went to the Nicaraguan Contras, breaking yet another law, this one banning military aid to the anti-Sandinista guerrillas. The ultimate goal of this shadow government, said a congressional investigation, was to create a “worldwide private covert operation organization” whose “income-generating capacity came almost entirely from its access to US government resources and connections.”… The Democrats, now the majority in both congressional chambers, gleefully convened multiple inquiries into the scandal. From May to August 1987, TV viewers tuned in to congressional hearings on the affair. They got a rare glimpse into the cabalistic world of spooks, bagmen, and mercenaries, with their code words, encryption machines, offshore holding companies, unregistered fleets of boats and planes, and furtive cash transfers. Fawn Hall, Oliver North’s secret shredder, told of smuggling evidence out of the Old Executive Office Building in her boots, and lectured Representative Thomas Foley that “sometimes you have to go above the written law.”…11

But within a year, Iran/Contra was a dead issue. The multiple investigations lumbered forward, yet the public had lost the thread and dropped interest. When Congress released its final report in 1988, Reagan dismissed it: “They labored,” he said, “and brought forth a mouse.” Later that month, George H.W. Bush was elected president, despite being implicated in the scandal. Meanwhile, Reagan’s approval ratings rebounded, and he is now held up by many Democrats as an exemplar of an acceptable, responsible Republican.13

What happened? How did Reagan and his band of génocidaires and co-conspirators escape from the clutches of the Democratic investigation into Iran/Contra?14

Part of the reason is that the Democrats, in all the many, many hours of hearings broadcast on PBS, never once questioned the underlying objectives Iran/Contra was designed to carry out, never once critiqued the assumptions of Washington’s bipartisan blowback policy in the Middle East or its brutal, inhumane war on the Sandinistas. At the heart of the Democrats’ disaster was their unwillingness ever to question Reagan’s support for the Contras, whose human-rights atrocities were well-documented. Rather than attacking Reagan’s restoration of anticommunism as the guiding principle of US policy, they focused on procedure—such as the White House’s failure to oversee the National Security Council—or on proving that top officials had prior knowledge of the crimes. But, in what should be a big red flag to those hoping Russia will bring down Trump, they never found the smoking gun, and Reagan sailed off into the future.15

My favorite bit of Iran/Contra theater is Democratic Senator George Mitchell’s seven-minute lecture to Oliver North, who had just essentially confessed. For nearly eight minutes, Mitchell dilates on the procedural virtues of America, its “rule of law,” etc. North had earlier testified that he had been doing God’s work, which earned this rebuke from Mitchell: “God does not take sides in American politics, and in America disagreement with the policies of the government is not evidence of lack of patriotism.” But Mitchell had already lost the argument: He started his sermon admitting the legitimacy of intervening in Nicaragua and “containing” the Sandinistas. “There’s no disagreement on that,” the senator said.16

Let me be clear: The analogy between Iran/Contra and Trump’s Russia file isn’t perfect. Erik Prince isn’t John Singlaub (though taken as a pair, they represent the long 30-year run of theocratic paramilitarist internationalism).17

The main difference between Iran/Contra then and the Russia scandal now is that the Democrats in the 1980s couldn’t capitalize on the conspiracy because they shared the broad Cold War, anti-Communist, militarist consensus that led the New Right to organize it. Today, in an important contrast, Trumpgate reflects more the fracturing of that consensus, especially after the catastrophe of the Iraq War and the collapse of financial markets in 2008.18

Baying for a new Cold War as a way of isolating Trump is dangerous, given the volatility of our governing elites.

Trump’s election has revealed deep divisions among our governing elites on how to respond to the twinned failures of neoliberalism and militarist internationalism. The nature of those divisions is complex and crisscrossing, and the public has only a dim perception of their outlines. They comprise military power, budgetary resources, law enforcement, and energy policy, all refracted through the ideological and psychic distortions of what has become an endless global war. I doubt there is any single person, no matter how burrowed he or she is in the deep state, who knows what is fully at stake in all its many dimensions.19

But I do know that liberals baying for a new Cold War as a way of isolating Trump is extremely, extremely dangerous, especially given the volatility and fracturing of our governing elites. Where will it end? With Trump reversing course and supporting NATO expansion? Bombing Iran to prove he isn’t Putin’s lap dog? Deeper into Syria, even as Washington’s bloody hands in Yemen go unnoticed? North Korea? George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and David Frum have now been inducted into the resistance. Even Sesame Street’s Elmo can only be defended from Trump by weighing his worth in relation to national security, as Gen. Stanley McChrystal just did in TheNew York Times. But of course we have to conscript Elmo and Grover because, as Paul Berman now tells us, we have always been at war with Russia: “Hostility to Russia is the oldest continuous foreign-policy tradition in the United States, and that is because, apart from the ordinary conflicts of interest that might be expected to arise between two very large nations, a philosophical conflict has pitted America against the Russians, and has done so throughout the centuries, with the fate of the world at stake.”20

It’s an enduring myth that George W. Bush’s disastrous response to 9/11 was exclusively a neoconservative scheme. At least since the fall of the Berlin Wall, post–Cold War liberals were hoping for a new foreign-policy mission to give meaning to American power, witnessed by how quickly “progressive interventionists” like Berman fell into line. The invasion of Iraq was sparked by 9/11 and organized by Cheney’s gang. But it was a bipartisan project over a decade in the making, with the terrain softened by Bill Clinton’s breezy bombings of Baghdad.21

So, if the current situation in the Middle East is what a united ruling class and trigger-finger intellectuals brought us, what hell awaits us now that the establishment has turned against itself, with competing factions using militarism to leverage the polarization and gain position?22

Investigate and see if one sovereign nation (Russia) interfered in another's (USA) elections? Fine. Great idea. No nation should interfere in another's sovereignty. Then we'll investigate the USA's interference in other nation's sovereignty. We could start with Ukraine, though there are PLENTY to choose from. Hell, we could go back a little further and investigate America's actions in the then USSR under Gorbachev. Something about the installation of Yeltsin and the literal razing to the ground of the Russian parliament. And suddenly Americans aren't so keen on the idea, anymore.

(0)(0)

Karin Eckvallsays:

April 11, 2017 at 2:09 pm

According to this investigation by the NY Times, Hillary's State Department signed off on a deal that gave Russia significant control of uranium in the U.S. At the same time, cash was flowing from the Canadian corporation that sold to Russia to the Clinton Foundation. My point? Many elites in both parties are corrupt.

While he may have pursued some false leads, the central contention of Daniel Sheehan's "Secret Team" thesis -- that the U.S. intelligence community engaged in widespread murder, torture, and drug trafficking -- is not seriously contested by anyone who is familiar with the facts. Indeed, the main flaw in the "Secret Team" thesis is the idea that this was ever really a secret. The failure of the Democrats in the 1980s was not their investigation of the Reagan Administration's crimes, but their complicity in them. George Mitchell presided over a Congress that routinely approved funding for massacres in El Salvador, Angola, and around the world. As you point out, he never once questioned the policy of drowning the world in blood for the advancement of U.S. empire.

The idea that the laudable work of the Christic Institute in unmasking the many crimes of the U.S. intelligence community has anything in common with the world's largest telecommunications conglomerate's anti-Russia conspiracy mongering (which may itself be orchestrated, and is certainly fueled, by elements within the U.S. intelligence community) is laughable.

I do agree with you that "﻿now is the time to put forth an aggressive social-democratic platform, one that includes single-payer, student debt relief, a real industrial policy, and free education." But however "liberal" the viewpoints expressed on MSNBC may appear to be, its owners have no real interest in such a platform actually becoming reality -- otherwise their millions of lobbying dollars would have be directed towards these ends, rather than on their attempted purchase of Time Warner Cable. It's not surprising, then, that they would prefer to focus viewers' attention on the pernicious threat of Internet petitions to return Alaska to Russia.

The problem with Trump is not that he's somehow anti-American -- but that his ugliness and evil is a logical outgrowth of the corrupt and immoral system that has ruled this country since its founding. One of the biggest problems with the "Russia connection" strategy is that it seeks to de-legitimize Trump, while legitimizing the system that made Trump's rise inevitable.

(14)(0)

Diane Powellsays:

April 7, 2017 at 7:51 pm

No one wants a new Cold War, least of all, Liberals and Progressives. In case you have failed to notice, Russia is no longer Communist. It has been well established that Putin supports various right wing white nationalist movements because they are anti EU, UN, NATO, and dislike both Merkel and Hillary, labeling them as globalists. However, Putin has his OWN reasons! In particular, his desire for unfettered expansion into Ukraine, and other neighbors and his exploits in Syria.
Putin, like Trump, is also motivated by greed and power.
Part of the problem of explaining right wing conspiracies is a lack of follow through from the media, who after all, have to answer to their corporate backers, who are invested in the Military Industrial Complex far more than any Liberal ever has been!

(3)(4)

Fred Carusosays:

April 12, 2017 at 4:45 pm

Putin took Crimea, where his Southern fleet is anchored, right after Clinton, the CIA, and Ukrainian neo-Nazis (among others) overthrew his friend, the democratically elected President, and installed a Billionaire NATO-friendly Banker to be President in his place.

What would an American President have done, if the shoe were on the other foot?

Furthermore, the Eastern part of Ukraine is ethnically Russian, so they are reacting to the coup as well. That's what started the civil war, the coup, not the Crimean annexation.

(0)(0)

Clark M Shanahansays:

April 8, 2017 at 4:07 pm

Diane,
Could you please tell me where you found out about Putin's desire to take possession of Ukraine?
Does he really want to start a war in Eastern Europe?
That would be a lose-lose deal and I just haven't seen any indication that he is stupid or insane.

(3)(1)

William J Forrestsays:

April 7, 2017 at 4:55 pm

I suspect Trump minions were behind the hack/leak, and used Russians to launder the data release. But I also agree that it would be very hard to nail him, without a credible witness' testimony. I think, in this case, torture might be in order. Unfortunately, we have no access to Wonder Woman's golden 'Lasso of Truth'. I think we should move on, as suggested by Grandin.

By the time he's convicted of election fraud, Trump will probably die of old age. Emoluments are probably a better bet.

(0)(3)

Bruce Mastronsays:

April 7, 2017 at 9:20 am

Good stuff.
But I do object to any linkage between Elmo and Grover.
Elmo is a scab who essentially took Grover's place during a work stoppage years ago for better pay for the Sesame Street cast.
First they cut Grover's hours back drastically and now he's simply contract labor without any benefits.
Elmo voted for Clinton.
Grover voted for Bernie.
Fight the power!

(9)(6)

Michael Robertsonsays:

April 6, 2017 at 11:51 pm

Look at Christie. Many Dems hoped that Bridgegate would send him to prison, but even though he's done politically the buck stopped with his underlings. Even if more Trump staffers are found guilty, there's no guarantee that an investigation will reach Trump, who has likely maintained some plausible deniability. Democrats have the same problem they had with Iran/Contra: they (and Republicans) belong to a feckless foreign policy establishment. Back in Reagan's time it wanted to overthrow any government that had a whiff of social justice in it's agenda, now it is beholden to arms manufacturers that want to maintain a constant state of war. The obsessive vilification of Russia leads in only one direction - a war - and most people don't want another war, especially one that could end in nuclear annihilation, and that is why Democrats will not get traction on this.

(19)(6)

Judith Felstensays:

April 6, 2017 at 10:15 pm

I want to see an investigation into Trump's business practices, his sources of capital especially, his debt load, and whether the Trump Organization is transmuting international organized crime profits into real estate.

(16)(5)

Kathy Heynesays:

May 16, 2017 at 12:48 am

Didn't get anyone anywhere with Rumsfeld, Cheney or the Clinton Foundation.

(0)(0)

Michael Robertsonsays:

April 6, 2017 at 11:36 pm

Any connections between Trump and Russia should be viewed in the larger context of Trump's business empire, which has essentially functioned like a crime syndicate, and the conflicts of interest between his duty as president and his business entanglements. I believe that Russian connections are a small part of Trump's criminality.

(13)(2)

Karin Eckvallsays:

April 6, 2017 at 10:03 pm

Establishment, neoliberal Democrats and Hillary enthusiasts are demonstrating the hysterical, obsessive, crazy behavior - for going on six months - they claimed Trump would exhibit if he lost. They are deeply devoted to the status quo...and to never admitting a mistake. It's useless. Thank goodness for Bernie Sanders, who has set up an organization to promote progressive candidates around the country; held town halls in Trump country to make the case for a progressive agenda; written legislation on single payer health care and free public college; etc. Thank goodness someone is trying to move us forward.

(22)(16)

Diane Powellsays:

April 7, 2017 at 8:27 pm

No, Trump was going to round up his Brownshirts i.e., outlaw motorcycle gangs, KKK, Aryan Nations, and militias if he lost. Not quite the same thing as people peacefully protesting, is it?

And you think that Bernie will be able to get his agenda passed by a Republican dominated Congress, Senate, and the White House? Really?

(2)(7)

Karin Eckvallsays:

April 11, 2017 at 1:58 pm

He was, was he. Fascinating.

I said Sanders is attempting to move us forward, I didn't claim he could get those things passed...But you go ahead and stick with Hillary and her argument that "no we can't" and "think small" (mocked even by Biden), and settle for those who want only to tweak the status quo.

(4)(0)

Daniel Westricksays:

April 6, 2017 at 8:38 pm

The Nation's obsessive harping about new Mcarthyism and red baiting is getting very old. There is much about Russian interference in the 2016 that we don't know but we know it did occur. We also know that it will never be investigated at all unless continuous pressure is brought to bear on Congress. Being too critical of Russia is not the biggest danger we face.

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Randall S Andrewssays:

April 6, 2017 at 8:24 pm

If I get the gist of this article, and I think I do, the point is that Democrats/(liberals) are misdirecting their energies. But it was hard to slog through the article to get to this understanding. The article spends way too much time discussing and parsing “smoking guns,” and way too little time setting a positive agenda for the left. The article is just as guilty of misdirection as the strategies it condemns.

There are many issues to expand the agenda of the left: single-payer health care; good public schools; affordable higher education; well-paying jobs for people who work with their hands; infrastructure improvement; more word-diplomacy and less gun-diplomacy; the environment; sustainable energy; more reasonable consumption of energy; a safe and largely domestic food supply; actual values instead of hypocritical words about “religious freedom;” actual values to replace the de facto worship of the almighty dollar; community building—not just for inner cities, but for rural communities in the “fly-over” states and the cultural and the social wastelands known as suburbs; human dignity and human rights, but a universal understanding of such—yes for women and minority groups, but also for “old, straight, white guys,” who shouldn’t been as monsters and pariahs any more than the slurs often directed at minorities and women; reproductive rights; rescuing the word “culture” from the right who collectively use it to mean “white English-speakers,” and reinstate it as meaning the arts, the American Dream, the collective soul of the American spirit, civic values (this is not to the exclusion of religious values, but in addition to them.)

The right has been able to sell their hateful, race-to-the-bottom lies through constant repetition by the right-wing press and politicians. What could the left do if it showed as much effort with enlightened leadership, guidance and encouragement instead of getting bogged down in convoluted, and in the end, meaningless arguments, and the politically correct traps of making sure that everyone must accept the whole agenda before progress can be made, and of ignoring and squelching dissenting voices.

If the right has been able to build a mountain out of bullshit, why is it that the left can’t manage to build a molehill with decency and truth?

(28)(6)

Kathy Heynesays:

May 16, 2017 at 12:51 am

Excellent comment, Randall - and I think you already know the answer: because the Left aren't the Left at all. Hell, they don’t even claim to be: "centrists", they call themselves.

(0)(1)

Mark Robertssays:

April 7, 2017 at 1:42 pm

Well said.
Thank you Randall

(3)(1)

Elizabeth Clarksays:

April 6, 2017 at 7:21 pm

You know what's even more of a waste of time than the Russia scandal? The current obsession in certain corners of the left with critiquing the reporting of the Russia scandal.

(15)(14)

Elizabeth Gioumousissays:

April 7, 2017 at 2:44 pm

Yeah. Well said. Maybe we could agree that there may or may not have been criminal behavior on the part of the Trump campaign, and it would be good to know, but other issues are more important. Investigate the Russia thing, but focus on health care, jobs, infrastructure, all that good stuff, and especially the environment and climate.

(3)(1)

Euba Nallsays:

April 6, 2017 at 6:59 pm

So like with the mess Bush Jr. left us in, we Democrats should lay down and forget and forgive the Republican's act's of War and aggression? We many seriously have a Spy in office as our President? Does no one care about that? Trump and his enablers are just fucking insane! We have a complete idiot as Commander in Chief, Get some balls media do your fucking job!

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Diane Powellsays:

April 7, 2017 at 8:19 pm

I don't think these commentators ARE Democrats because they are bashing Liberals and Hillary worse than right wing Republicans!
Who, or WHAT are they exactly? I voted for Bernie in the primary then went with Hillary when she won. It was never a question for me! Comparing Trump to Hillary and then saying that SHE is too corrupt to vote for, so you decide to either vote for Stein, Trump, or a Libertarian is just bat shit crazy! These people sicken me! They are doing nothing but bitching and moaning, while our Democracy is failing! I watched Jeff Merkley stay up all night long during the Gosuch nomination. Like hell if any of these brats would ever stand up for our Democracy like that!

(5)(3)

Adriana Avilasays:

April 7, 2017 at 8:30 am

I don't think anyone is advocating to forget about anything. The article shows how it could take years to get any investigation done, and if the democratic party doesn't focus on the actual GOP/Trump policies - which in my opinion are devastating for American lives - it will lose elections because it wasted all the energy with a process that will/would run at its own pace.

(8)(5)

Michael Robertsonsays:

April 6, 2017 at 11:32 pm

The fixation on Russian meddling (and yes the shoe was on the other foot not long ago, remember Yeltsin?) has actually diverted attention away from Republican dirty tricks: voter suppression, operation Crosscheck, Comey's announcement.

(9)(7)

Karin Eckvallsays:

April 6, 2017 at 9:51 pm

You're hysterically regurgitating neoliberal propaganda meant to excuse its failures and Hillary's, on the order of Republicans spouting Fox News "facts". There isn't any evidence (which even Joan Walsh admits) that Russia did the hacking; just presumption based on their reported typical patterns as analyzed by our "intelligence" agencies, which have been so wrong so often about so many things over so many decades, it's a disgrace. Move on.

(22)(12)

Robert Andrewssays:

April 7, 2017 at 7:25 am

The Oligarchy/Corporate controlled DNC establishment cranked up the "Russian attack" theory on our country that had directly manipulated the election as the reason for losing to Donald Trump days after (or was it hours?) the election. It was utilized to divert the attention of their main stream constituents away from the real reasons they lost. The immoral, across-the-board, manipulations and lies taken to keep the grass roots movement and the agenda's they pushed in-check. Using it to attack President Trump was initially a very distant second.

(9)(6)

Karin Eckvallsays:

April 6, 2017 at 10:06 pm

Also, the "globalism" promoted by neoliberals and Republicans means that many elites are going to have connections to Russia...including associates of Hill and Bill.